An argument over which literary genre is more important during drinking bout
led to fatal stabbing

Many a Russian night has been passed disputing the merits of literature around a kitchen table – but few end in murder.

A 53-year-old former teacher and poetry lover from the Urals has been sentenced to eight years in a penal colony for stabbing his 66-year-old friend to death during an argument about literary forms.

The teacher had paid a visit to his comrade in the town of Irbit, 1,200 miles east of Moscow, where the pair were soon downing shots of vodka.

"During the drinking, the two men began an argument over which literary genre is more important, poetry or prose," said a spokesman for the regional investigative committee. "The owner of the home argued that prose is the real literature, while his guest, who had previously worked as a teacher, insisted it was poetry."

Russians are great readers, and will often embarrass Britons and Americans with their intricate knowledge of the novels of John Galsworthy, or the short stories of American writer O. Henry.

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The literary tiff soon turned ugly, said the investigative committee, and the guest dealt his host a fatal blow to the chest with a knife.

The murderer fled the scene but was soon detained in a nearby village, and confessed.

Yury Nikitkin, the victim of the attack, which took place on 20 January, had pieces of his own prose published in a local newspaper in Irbit.

Ironically, residents said the unemployed Mr Nikitkin was actually partial to a bit of poetry as well.

"The whole town knew him, he was a very emotional person, if he met someone on the street he could declaim some verses or make a declaration of love," Galina Ufarkina, director of the town's library service, told the Komsomolskaya Pravda daily.

With a population of 38,000, Irbit has acquired something of a reputation for unusual deaths and attempted murders this year.

Last month someone tried to kill a local businessman with a grenade linked to a tripwire outside his gate. In July a poacher shot dead his friend by mistake on a hunting trip, and an electrician at a milk factory stabbed his pregnant ex-wife to death.

A month earlier, a man murdered a pensioner and seriously injured her 18-year-old granddaughter after the latter told friends he had stolen a laptop.

Last year, one man shot another in the head with an air gun as they queued for beer during an outdoor City Day event in Rostov-on-Don in southern Russia. The two had fallen into "passionate argument" over the merits of 18th-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant, police said.